Quebec running out of hospital beds as surge of COVID-19 patients fill emergency rooms

The number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 is expected to continue rising even though emergency rooms are already at full capacity.

The number of patients in Quebec emergency rooms has nearly doubled in the past week and ICU beds are filling up, too.

At this rate, hospitalizations could reach 3,000 within the next few weeks, Quebec health minister Christian Dubé told a news conference on Thursday, just as the province announced 415 more people were admitted to hospital with the virus in one day. There was a total of 1,953 hospitalizations on Thursday. 

But Quebec only has 1,500 ER beds.

“When you are beyond the capacity of a hospital, that means that that hospital now starts to ration care,” said Dr. Donald Vinh, an infectious disease specialist with the McGill University Health Centre.

That means not everyone needing emergency care will get it. Right now, unvaccinated patients continue to fill half the ER beds, even though they only account for 10 per cent of the population in Quebec. The Institut national d'excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS) projects the number of patients in intensive care could reach 400 by mid-January, up from the current 207. 

Experts say hospitals can't monopolize all their beds for COVID-19 patients.

“People can continue to have strokes and heart attacks, motor vehicle accidents and a lot of things we can't prevent or prepare for when people need urgent care,” said Dr. Vinh.

Tough choices could lie ahead when people arrive at admissions.

“Hospitals have had to put back in place their committees to carefully examine the prioritization of patients to make sure everyone who has an urgent or semi-urgent need for surgery is prioritized,” said Dr. Lucie Opartny, Quebec's associate deputy health minister.

The lack of beds is further compounded by an increasing shortage of health-care staff, due to illness or exhaustion.

Christian Dubé, Quebec’s health minister, said Thursday there are 20,000 health-care workers who are off the job due to COVID-19, which is in addition to about 50,000 workers who are on long-term sick leave for other reasons, including burnout.

Dubé said he's looking everywhere for help.

“There is a pool of people who can come back and they're either retired or in private agencies,” he said.

The rapid rise in hospitalizations is adding even more pressure on an overextended medical system and that's forcing doctors and nurses to improvise even more.

In some hospitals, nurses say they're now doing jobs normally handled by nursing assistants. At the Pierre-Le Gardeur Hospital in Terrebonne, Que., a group of doctors are now coming in on their days off to take over nursing duties.

“Nurses remain specialists in their field but we can help them by looking at lab tests, taking vital signs and doing patient checks,” said Dr. James Tu, an ER doctor at the hospital.

However, it remains a short-term solution in a rapidly deteriorating environment.